Beer Before Wine? People Vomited in Pursuit of Answer

Newser — Kate Seamons

If you've attempted to "feel fine" by always drinking beer before wine, it may have all been for naught. A new study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition finds that the order in which you have beer and wine doesn't affect how severe your hangover is.

To arrive at their findings, researchers got 90 people pretty darn drunk. The participants were ages 19 to 40, recruited by Germany's Witten/Herdecke University, and divvied into three groups.

The control group had beer one week and wine the next. The other two groups drank beer then wine or wine then beer. Their blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) was measured throughout, and they flipped to the second beverage once they hit 0.05 BAC and stopped drinking when they hit 0.11 BAC.

A press release notes that worked out to about 2.5 pints of beer and 4 glasses of white wine per session. The next week those two groups flip-flopped.

They were given water to drink before bed and received medical supervision overnight. The next day, they had to report their hangover severity by rating eight items on a scale of zero to seven: thirst, fatigue, headache, dizziness, nausea, stomach ache, tachycardia (elevated heart rate), and loss of appetite.

(The Guardian points out that about one in 10 participants vomited.) The researchers' conclusion: "Neither type nor order of consumed alcoholic beverages significantly affected hangover intensity." Lead author Jöran Köchling elaborates: "The truth is that drinking too much of any alcoholic drink is likely to result in a hangover." But he says there are two "red flags" we should pay attention to that can help predict how rotten you'll feel the next day: how drunk you feel while drinking, and whether you vomit.